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Monday, July 29, 2013

Woohoo! I may have vanished temporarily but I had to come back to celebrate the piCture pOlish Blog Fest especially with this time being Year of the Blogger!! *throws confetti in the air* YAY!! I had such fun last year so I knew this year would be great too.

When piCture pOlish said this year it was a nail art challenge they weren't wrong! Challenge is the key word here! We were given 3 polishes and told to put nail art together. So I got my thinking cap on and eventually came up with this.

Last week, like many others I saw this post by Nailz Craze. It looks so simple and easy and had many of us thinking "why didn't someone mention this years ago"! While I totally love the idea, I'm not sure if clumsy me can work holding the stamper so it doesn't roll away but it really got me thinking ... "how can I do multiple designs at once"??

I'm just going to refer to it as "reverse stamping" from here in (since instead of doing polish and stamp, you are doing stamp and then polish!) and if someone else has already covered this in detail (or if it has a better name), please let me know as I'd love to give you some credit!!!

So let's get to it! To create this funky cupcake look, you first need some polishes!!

* a stamper and scraper [I prefer a konad double stamper and an old iTunes card]

* a small nail art brush or dotting tool

* a clear top coat

* baking paper [I've been told baking paper is the same thing as parchment paper, cooking paper, bakery paper and wax paper. Hopefully one of those terms is familar to you!]

* and patience!!!! Lots and lots of patience!

Step 1 - Tear off a section of baking paper and use the top coat to paint squares anywhere on the paper and wait for them to dry.

Step 2- Choose your stamping design and stamp it directly on the clear squares you painted earlier. [If you can't see where they were, just hold the paper up to the light!]. Then, wait for it to dry.

Step 3 - Grab your colours and decide which part of the stamp you wish to paint first. Unlike regular painting, you want whatever colour on top first. Not the bottom first!! So in this case, Candy for the cupcake liner and the cherry! Dab on your polish instead of using brush strokes. If you don't have a brush, a dotting tool will work the same. Fully paint over the area, including the design. When finished, again wait for it to dry.

Step 5 - Cut out your design! As I only want the cupcake, I'll further trim this to remove the excess stamping before using.

Step 6 - Prepare you nails ready to be cupcaked! I've painted 2 in Beige and 2 in Frosting.

Step 7 - Carefully peel your polish stamping from the paper. Because of the top coat, this just lifts right off! Then FLIP IT OVER!! The stamping design is right there in all it's glory, with the pretty colours behind it.

Step 8 - Check your polish! If it's still tacky then place the cupcake straight on top! If you polish is dry, add a thin layer of topcoat before placing! Because I have small nails, I've put them slightly on a slant so they fit! Also unlike decals, it does not matter if part of the design hangs over the side of your nail. The entire design is nail polish so we will remove the excess in the next step!

Step 9 - Dip a clean up brush in acetone and run it around the edge of your nail to remove the excess design. It will simply vanish before your eyes. Awesome.

Step 10 - As you flipped the design over, it should be nice and smooth as there is already a top coat holding it on as the new top. If you have loose sections or for piece of mind, just add another coat of clear top coat.

Step 11 - Add more cupcakes!!! These little ones are from the same stamping plate and I've painted their cute faces in beige and the bottom in candy!

So there you go! While this is time consuming with waiting for polish to dry, you can make your designs a far way in advance. I've personally found polish starts peeling off the baking paper after 3-4 weeks and then it becomes more fragile to store but it's still usable. I'll definately be reverse stamping again in the future!